[mythtv-users] Problem getting AverTVHD A180 going.

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Wed Mar 14 22:58:23 UTC 2007


Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> R. G. Newbury wrote:
>> mike wrote:
>>   
>>>> OK. atscscan is a synonym for 'scan' as far as I can tell.
>>>> I presume that you have the card and its driver installed properly...
>>>> that is, no error messages in  dmesg... and it reports that it is
>>>> installing, and then has installed the firmware. And there is a set of
>>>> folders under /dev/dvb/adapter0
>>>>
>>>> Unless you can positively state those things, all bets are off.
>>>>
>>>> The commnand line you have given DOES NOT DO WHAT YOU WANT!
>>>>
>>>> scan -c only scans the card for services on the channel already tuned.
>>>> You  have never, as far as I can tell, actually tuned the card to
>>>> anything, so you are getting nothing...Think of it as tuning to 'channel
>>>> 1'.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> You need to use:
>>>>
>>>> scan -a 0 -f 0 -d 0 -U US-Cable-Standard-Frequencies-QAM256
>>>>
>>>> This tells scan to try every frequency in that file...I may have the
>>>> name of the file wrong... its so long, I immediately shortened it on my
>>>> machine...The other switches force the use of adapter0, frontend 0,
>>>> demux0 (in case you have multiple cards). The rest of the defaults are
>>>> acceptable for your purposes. This will take quite some time to run. The
>>>> summary is what you want.
>>>>
>>>> This will scan for *every* available service. Some will be encrypted,
>>>> some will be radio. You can play with the command line switches to see
>>>> what happens if you restrict the search, later. At the moment you want
>>>> to get SOMETHING... ANYTHING.
>>>>
>>>> NOTE that this card will not decrypt encrypted HD channels. I presume
>>>> you mention that fact, to confirm that you think you should be getting
>>>> some QAM256 encoded, but unencrypted channels with this card. It also
>>>> appears that you may be confusing digital with HD...Digital is a
>>>> transport method. SD and HD are quality levels. With your card, you can
>>>> get digital streams. In the US, you should get a number of SD streams,
>>>> and a few HD streams, being the cable equivalents of the local (OTA) HD
>>>> broadcasts which the FCC mandates that the cableco distribute
>>>> *unencrypted*. In Canada, anything HD is encrypted on cable... dammit.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Goeff
>>>>       
>>> Thanks Geoff...and I mean a sincere THANKS! for having the patience to help me 
>>> get this working, and it is!!!
>>>
>>> I translated the commands you described for my stuff, and found that 
>>>
>>> scan -a 0 -f 0 -d 
>>> 0 -U /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/atsc/us-Cable-Standard-center-frequencies-QAM256
>>>
>>> ...actually got over 300 channels. Once I knew that the card COULD get 
>>> channels, I went back to mythtv-setup and added the card, and did the scan 
>>> using "cable" and "QAM256" It works, mostly...there's some hanging up where 
>>> it only gets "partial lock" sometimes, but overall it's working!
>>>
>>> My channel editor is showing lots of garbage, I'm sure there's a lot of 
>>> duplicates in there, and lables that don't mean anything to me... but I'll go 
>>> back and sort that out later.
>>>
>>> Once I get it all sorted out, it's gonna be very cool.
>>>
>>> Many thanks again, Geoff.
>>>     
>> You are welcome...And the next time some poor guy is thrashing around 
>> trying to get his stuff working, it will be your turn to hold *his* hand 
>> and lead him through it!...Sort of a 'pay it forward'.
>>
>> And on that occasion, you will be ready and you will really understand 
>> how it works!
>>
>> Now you get to spend a couple of hours using azap in one console and 
>> mplayer in another to see what the hell all those channels are! I get 
>> about 450 in total of which only 32 or so are usable.
>>
>> Glad to be of service.
>>
>>   
> You can do this in the frontend now using the Frontend Channel Editor 
> (as described in the Wiki) to tune the channels, edit the callsign and 
> xmltvid, etc.
> 
> Kevin

Agreed, Kevin, but only if your setup has actually given you a usable 
scan. When I last tried, scanning did not work at all for me. I had to 
do it the long way, with atscscan and ending up with (effectively) a 
channel.conf, which I had to import into the mysql channel table one 
channel at a time (for 32 channels). (All of which is explained in the 
wiki...heading something like ATSC/QAM in USA/Canada...)

Geoff


-- 
              R. Geoffrey Newbury			
            Barrister and Solicitor
       Suite 106, 150 Lakeshore Road West
          Mississauga, Ontario, L5H 3R2

         o905-271-9600 f905-271-1638
           newbury at mandamus.org

        Helping with the HTTP issue
<a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/">HTTP</a>


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list